Tulsi Gabbard becomes Trump’s most dangerous ally as she fuels claim about Biden targeting Covid skeptics

WASHINGTON, DC: Former Democrat-turned-Donald Trump ally Tulsi Gabbard is being called out for allegedly spreading a conspiracy theory that the Joe Biden administration labeled Covid-19 skeptics as domestic terrorists.

According to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, the director of national intelligence is doing more than just cozying up to MAGA media — she’s actively “encouraging the radicalization that does lead to domestic terrorism.”

That’s a heavy accusation, but it stems from Gabbard’s recent decision to declassify a 2021 memo from federal law enforcement warning about the way Covid-19 disinformation was being weaponized by extremists.

Gabbard says the memo shows Biden’s team targeting Americans “for using their First Amendment rights.” But her critics say she’s twisting the facts to rile up Trump’s base. 

The Joe Biden memo that shook the MAGA world

Last week, Tulsi Gabbard declassified a memo that she claimed proves the Biden administration viewed Covid-19 skeptics as a national security threat. During an appearance on Fox News, she told host Will Cain that it was an “ominous” attempt by the Biden White House to “label [people] a domestic terror threat” just for having controversial views.

That’s not how Marcotte sees it.

In an op-ed for Salon, she accused Gabbard of pushing “the flat-out lie that President Joe Biden was labeling Americans as ‘terrorists’ because they opposed Covid-19 mitigation measures like masks and vaccines.” Marcotte insists that “Biden did no such thing.”

According to her, the memo in question details threats made by far-right extremists — including organized militias and white supremacists — against healthcare workers and government officials in 2020 and 2021.

It warns that violent rhetoric tied to pandemic conspiracy theories could incite more attacks. Marcotte pointed to the caveat, “The mere advocacy of political or social positions, political activism, use of strong rhetoric… may not constitute violent extremism and are constitutionally protected.”

Amanda Marcotte slams Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump voters

Amanda Marcotte accused Tulsi Gabbard of deliberately misrepresenting the memo because the base likely won’t dig into the details.

“Gabbard knows that Trump voters aren't exactly the reading types, and they will never bother to read this memo,” she raged. “So she and her minions in the MAGA press have been pretending this document was a pretext by the Biden administration to go after Republican voters who didn't break the law.”

She pointed to Gabbard’s retweets — one from right-wing pundit Michael Shellenberger, who claimed the memo meant the Biden administration “viewed millions of Americans as a terrorist threat,” and another from Cain, who asserted the feds had labeled “some COVID-19 opponents ‘domestic violent extremists.’”

But Marcotte argued these claims ignore the memo’s context. “Far from equating all anti-vaccine folks with terrorists, the memo was specific about the threat,” she wrote, stressing that it was focused on “members of organized militias and white supremacist groups.”

Amanda Marcotte accuses Donald Trump's administration of silencing speech

Amanda Marcotte also alleged that Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign to paint Joe Biden as the First Amendment villain is a political smokescreen meant to distract Donald Trump's supporters from his own alleged crackdown on dissent.

“The same, of course, cannot be said of Trump, whose administration has been arresting innocent people for no other reason than their political opinions,” she claimed, pointing to the controversial arrests of three noncitizen students — Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, and Mohsen Mahdawi — all of whom reportedly protested Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

Two have since been released, but Khalil is still in custody and fears deportation to a country “where he believes Israel will kill him," according to Marcotte.

No official charges were announced in those cases, and the Trump administration has not said that deportation proceedings were based solely on political expression.

However, it must be noted that immigration law does allow for broad enforcement on non-citizens, especially in national security contexts.

Still, Marcotte claimed this selective outrage is part of a calculated strategy. “This myth that Biden was targeting Republican voters for spreading COVID-19 disinformation functions as a distraction for the MAGA audience from their own culpability in Trump's war on free speech," she alleged. 

Is Tulsi Gabbard feeding extremism?

In Amanda Marcotte’s view, Tulsi Gabbard isn’t just misleading the public — she’s helping foment the kind of environment where political violence could thrive.

“By putting this out there, Gabbard is also encouraging more violent extremism. As with Trump's pardons of the Jan 6 rioters, Gabbard's actions send the message that the administration will shield domestic terrorists and other dangerous people by minimizing their actions," Marcotte wrote.

That, she argued, is the most dangerous part of Gabbard’s latest media blitz. By promoting a narrative that right-wing Americans were being unfairly labeled as terrorists, Gabbard is creating a victim complex that extremists can use to rationalize violence, “whether she intends to or not," Marcotte insisted.

“Her story is that they are innocent people unjustly targeted by the nefarious Biden administration. Having been recast as victims, any violence they commit now can be narrated as ‘self-defense,’” she added.

Marcotte closed with a warning: “Gabbard is no doubt aware that her dishonesty isn't just gross, but dangerous. She either doesn't care, or, like Trump, finds it useful to keep feeding the delusions of the scariest people in the MAGA movement."